Well, I’m in the Wall Street Journal
Posted in blog post on March 27th, 2010 by Merrill MarkoeTags: America's hobbies The Wall Street Journal, Easter, holidays, Merrill Markoe, Passover
Because, you know, I’m such a big player on Wall Street.
Actually, that’s misleading. I’M not in the Wall Street Journal. A piece I wrote is in the Wall Street Journal and you can see it for yourself right here. I was asked to write something about how the coming holidays are more than the usual amount of difficult because of all the divisive political opinion right now. So I wrote about America’s two big hobbies: Celebrating and Freaking out. I have never written anything so quickly in my life. And not because I was celebrating or freaking out. Though I did, at some point, start freaking out because I was only given 24 hours to write 1800 words. Its hard to write six pages and have them make sense in the English language in a time frame that small. Well, hard for me. Steven King probably can do it and be texting at the same time. And of course, when I say “six pages”, I mean in a theoretical notebook sense. That’s how I always keeps track of pages. In my head they are on imaginary paper.
This is the photo the Wall Street Journal used for an illustration.
None of these people are me. Although every photograph that I have of myself in this kind of a family context is nearly as horrifying. I was saving all of the afore mentioned photos, in the original scrap books assembled by my mother at various points in the sixties and seventies, because it seemed like a thing I must do. Some of the pictures of me were so unflattering that I carry them, as a cautionary note, imprinted and enlarged, in the masochistic portion of my brain where they surface almost every single day. Recently it was pointed out to me, by my beloved, that I didn’t have to save photographs that I truly hated. It took me a while to realize that he was, of course, right. And it was a happy day when I pulled out those bad looking images and threw them away.
Now if I could just figure out how to also get them out of my head.
Loved the article. I have a lot of experience with holiday tiptoeing and I took note of your safe topic ideas, but even with conversations about Easter grass and Jesse James, I still don’t think it’s wise to attempt a holiday gathering with anything less than a .05 mg Xanax. One year I tried Thanksgiving with a .25mg and I actually had to apologize to myself later for trying to be a hero.
Oh yea…I forgot to mention this…
Thank you for sharing your beloved’s revelation that it’s okay to put photos in the trash. I have many that I wish didn’t exist and it was liberating to realize that it’s legal to toss ’em.
It’ll be like sixth grade never even happened.
Thoroughly enjoyed your article, much “Truthyness” in it. And it’s a blessing that all those little mini/micro holidays, like St. Patrick’s or Bastille Day haven’t been morphed into Obligatory Family Summits. Not yet anyway.
There should be a Xanax Appreciation Day, however. I was inspired by Margaret’s candid remarks and am considering calling my local congress critter to suggest the idea. Because after looking at the calendar just now, I realized ….
Mother’s Day is coming.
Well, that’s where not having a personality is going to work in your favor. You don’t really have to buy presents. Although, now that I think of it, there’s also no time like the present to help her get the vegetable garden underway. Buy her a shovel, and some string bean seedlings.
That’s a great article. And look at the WSJ comments-some love it, one accuses you of imparting your political agenda, one shares her own family experience while saying nothing about the article, and, of course, the spammers show up. A good representation of Internet users. Nicely done.
I didn’t look at the comments because I was too afraid to. But those you mention pretty much sum up my career in general: some people like me, some people hate me, and then a bunch of others just want to sell me penis extenders.